Knocked Down But Not Knocked Out

True or not, it really does not matter, but in March of 2010 I believe I must have been one of the very first people to bear witness to the Cane Toad literally crossing the border from the Northern Territory into Western Australia. I was out spot-lighting for nocturnal fauna on Border Creek road which is almost as far north along the border as anyone can drive. I took a GPS waypoint of the exact point where I saw the cankerous little four-legged virus and I truly nearly cried. The years of anxiety knowing they were coming instantly condensed and metamorphosed into a concentrate of vial loathing on the realisation of their arrival. Later that same year the ponds along the border and around Sorby Hills were loaded with tadpoles and metamorphs and by 2011 the streets of Kununurra was crawling with toads. I made a little doco called Border Crossing and more recently I uploaded My Tribute to the Fauna of the Kimberley in memory of the ecology that once was.

The wild living landscapes around Kununurra that had captured my imagination and etched their presence in my soul suddenly felt deserted. Like a safari park plagued by poachers, you felt that there had to be animals there but you could see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing and, sadly, feel nothing. My backyard full of epic herpetofauna was now devoid of life and I lost a great deal of my motivation to go there.

But there may be some hope. In ecology, history has a habit of repeating itself and if the herpetofauna in far north Queensland can rebound from the toad then so to can the herpetofauna of the Kimberley. On my most recent trip to a project area west of 700km due north of Mount Isa I felt a little fire in my belly. That little fire wasn’t from the tinned curry I had the night before. It was that urgency and anxiety to get out into the night to catch something big. That sense of purpose that drives you to endure 40 degree heat and 50% humidity as you desperately flip rocks and bust open hollow logs in the hope of scratching up something worth a photo, a video or a blog.

Yellow-sided Two-lined Dragon, Diporiphora magna

That joy that is so palpable when you are driving out of camp in the morning or back to camp of an evening and you see a snake that was once so common that you have not seen for so very long. Or you chase down a species of monitor (goanna) who's populations density has been smashed by the toads. I had all those feelings again and damn it felt good.

Gould's Monitor, Varanus gouldii

Black-headed Python, Aspidites melanocephalus

So, like Rachael Hunter said in the Pantene Shampoo commercial “It won’t happen over night, but it will happen”. The fauna of the Kimberley will bounce back. It will never be as epic as it was, but it will be a heck of a lot better than losing it all for good.

As for that cankerous little four-legged virus, I admire it as a species; as an example of evolution on the hop (pardon the pun). I even find them kind of cute. But I could live with out them, particularly as our native fauna will struggle to the end of days to live with them.